The present invention relates to a design work assistance apparatus for assisting rationalized and high effective design work, with using a computer, a database and various kinds software tools, and in particular, to a design work navigation technology for guiding the design work, by accumulating and effectively practicing useful information relating to the design work.
With advancement in circumstances of the computers in recent years, such as a personal computer and/or a network, etc., for example, it is very often to progress the design work, with using such the computer circumferences and/or various kinds of software, in the manufacturing industries.
The followings are used in the design works; such as, a three dimensional (3-D) CAD (Computer Aided Design) system for producing a product configuration in a form of a configuration model data, a CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) system for estimating and/or testing performances and/or reliability of a product through a numeral analytic simulation, with using the configuration data, a document producing tool for producing a design data, and/or a product specification, a database system for accumulating the design documents into a database, and a search visualizing tool for enabling reference to information necessary for the design works, from various kinds of databases, etc.
There are two (2) ways or manners to use the software, which are utilized in the design works, effectively and correctly, as below.
A first one is a method of putting commands together in one (1) screen, such as, a start command for initializing a software tool necessary to the design work and an access command for accessing to the design data, for example, thereby enabling execution of the software tool mentioned above and reference/registration of the design data from that screen.
This first method generally is called by “portal”. Icons for various kinds of commands are displaced in the portal screen, so that a designer is able to start the necessary software tool, and/or to refer to the design data, via picking of the icons.
As a result of that, it is possible to reduce complicated job, such as, initializing processes of the various kinds of software tools and/or document search from the databases scattered, for example.
A second one is a method, in which definition is made on contents and steps of the design work in a form of a template, thereby guiding the design work along with the steps described in that design template.
Icons are disposed on the design template in an order of works, each being indicative of contents in each work process, which is displayed on an operation screen, and the design worker advances the design work by picking the icons along that order of works.
Definitions are made previously, on software tools, which are necessary to this work, materials to be referred, and formats of materials to be produced, in the each work process. When picking the icon of the work process, the design worker can use the software tools and the related materials, which are defined therein.
The second method, comparing to the first method, is able to restrict the necessary software tools and the related materials by a unit of design work.
A system for assisting producing work of a design drawing with using design process information is described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. Hei 6-19691 (JP-A 19691 (1994)), for example.
However, the design work assisting apparatus with using the conventional software system has the following drawbacks:
First, though the conventional design work assisting apparatus is able to show the information about the steps of work and the contents of work, which are set up previously, to the design worker clearly, however it cannot indicate the cautious matters to the design worker in advance, not to cause failure in the process of design work.
For this reason, it is impossible to use a teaching of the failure effectively in a next design work, if the similar failure occurs in the past design work, as the software system.
With the conventional design assisting apparatus, though it is possible to investigate the cautious matters relating to the failure, briefly, thereby to make up them into information to be referred to necessarily, however it is limited only within a region of the failures, which can be supposed. And, it is also difficult to specify a scene of giving attention.
Second, information relating to the case of failure (such as, a result of failure, acause, and history reaching to the failure, etc.) cannot be accumulated easily; therefore other works are necessary after completion of the design work, such as collecting information relating to the failure case and analyzing thereof.
Those works need a lot of time and labor, and an important failure case takes priority to the others, therefore it is very often that a small failure overlooked, which occurs at high frequency.
For example, jobs are necessary, such as, collecting the information relating to the failure case and analyzing it again, after completion of the design work, with the method, in which the design work information of each designer is merged, thereby owning in common, as is described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 10-240778 (JP-A 240778 (1998)).